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Comment by keepamovin | Hacker News Reader

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He's not innocent. He was a member of the cybercrime skid community called "The Com" that is regularly involved with cryptocurrency thefts, ddos attacks, and sim swapping. It's not normal. Dude is a blackhat skid with some crazy access to shit he shouldnt have access to imo.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-...

Ok, alright, well if that's the truth then I agree with you. I just don't happen to know whether he's blackhat or just infiltrating. Shrug.

> archipelago of Discord and Telegram chat channels

> He's not innocent.

Are you for real?

The recent KrebsOnSecurity goes into why this is no joke. These are cybercriminals trading in fraud, pig butchering, illegal pornography and swatting attempts.

Isn't he just chatting on there? Can you point to something in the article that's conclusive? Seems like desperate reaching.

Shouldn't this kind of high-level access to federal systems come with a bar that's higher than this? Shouldn't even the appearance of impropriety be sufficient to bar this person from these kinds of positions where the largest datasets of sensitive information are stored?

> The presumption of innocence should direct opinion, not implication, but the links should be noted.

The standard in civil service is historically and conventionally "beyond even the appearance of impropriety," not "presumption of innocence." I think the person in question falls well below that standard.

There's been a long-standing exception for hackers going back to the '90s, although this has changed in recent years because the cyber security field has become saturated. While at the DOJ under Janet Reno, my uncle bypassed all of that just to have random hackers from Black Hat pen-test USCIS. They even got arrested and let out of jail following a successful attempt to print a greencard for "Mr. Kan G. Roo" - Some exceptions to that rule have been employed in positions of authority for decades, and for good reason too.

The fact that hackers have been productive civil servants doesn't really change the standard. To make it explicit: there is no obvious mitigating qualification in this case.

Yeah, that makes sense based on my experience, tho the problem is appearance - they often fabricate it without substance - leads to a huge level abuse, and erodes trust in the authorities you thought you could. A system that rewards liars and punishes honesty is not good.

I think it also contributes to a culture of corruption - ie, given how resistant some of these civil service positions are to being fired in practice, I wonder how much they carry their vaunted morals through.

Once you're in: do whatever you please! This also supports the appearance - "we are beyond reproach so we couldn't be doing anything bad." Plus, the secrecy shield to block accountability. Likely all enables the level of corruption and perversion that's so obvious.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-...

The details are quite clear.

Can you point to some? What I saw was tenuous at best. He was chatting with people in The Com. So...?

That's not what's going on here. This was discussed at length on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42981756

Not sure the thread concludes what you think it does: top comment is basically a shrug this is normal.

Yes unfortunately this is much more specific than "cyber researchers interacting with cybercriminals"

> Coristine was fired from a company after leaking internal firm secrets to a competitor

...and now has physical access to building facilities at CISA

I don't know, in those situations how can you tell? Based off of this reporting it's not conclusive. May have just been a junior they landed blame on for some issues with competitors?

Sure, maybe the teenage hacker was acting in good faith.

> Based off of this reporting it's not conclusive.

The (linked in article) Krebs article is pretty damning, including screenshots of why he was fired.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/teen-on-musks-doge-team-...

He wasn't interacting with them as a researcher does. He was working for them as an employee. And then they fired him and accused him of leaking, and publicly humiliated him.

No one even knows what this kid is doing inside CISA's network!!

I think you're getting confused based on the article which says he was interacting with "The Com", and working for Path Networks which he was fired from for leaking.

There's already a reasonable approach to this, which DOGE is opting out of. Those who are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_hat are carefully given positions that require their specific skills, and aren't given run of the mill security sensitive IT roles.

Fair enough but is he really gray hat? We don't know. Or is he just whiter than white but walked in the shadow lands to gather sacred mushrooms?

If only they bothered to do a real background check

I do agree that vetting would be a good idea - did they tho? We don't know. That's the thing. I guess DOGE is sorta like move fast and break things applied to gov? Hah :)

He's either grey hat or deny hat...the allow hat ship sailed.

I don't get your joke, but thanks! Heh :)

You said whiter than white when I just gave a link to the page about grey hat hackers, not endorsing the name grey hat, so I said allow hat instead of white hat and deny hat instead if allow hat to mirror allowlist/denylist in place of whitelist/blacklist.

Oh hahahaha! :) that was quite a few levels of indirection

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